


How to Train Your Guinea Pig

by ginger_mosaic



Series: The Guinea Pig 'Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bullying, Charlie Bradbury Lives, Domestic Hunters, Gen, High School, Homophobia, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Post-Season/Series 10, Unconventional Families, homophobic slur, school fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9886718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_mosaic/pseuds/ginger_mosaic
Summary: "Family don't end in blood," which makes for a damn weird family. They're all still trying to figure it out, and it might take the help of a school fight and a guinea pig to make it all work.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place after Season 10, in a universe in which Claire moves into the bunker with the Winchesters. Also, Charlie didn’t die because fuck that. Also also, Cas voluntarily Fell, so he doesn’t have his grace anymore. All this will probably make more sense in future installments.
> 
> ALSO, big warning for a homophobic slur. It appears twice in one paragraph, and then that's it. There is also the q-slur once.

 

“We’re not getting a guinea pig.”

Disbelief washes over him when Sam and Cas both turn puppy-dog eyes on him, and Dean just _knows_ that they practiced that together, because the synchronicity of it was too perfect to be a coincidence. Sam’s got the classic _But Dean, why not_ look he gets when he thinks Dean is being unfair, and Cas looks somewhat hurt and disappointed, like that time Dean called him a baby in a trench coat. Why do they both have to make him feel like such a jerk? And when the hell had either of them ever even expressed an interest in guinea pigs?

“Who’s gonna take care of it when we’re out on hunts?” Dean demands, even though it’s probably a waste of time to appeal to reason when it comes to Sam and pets. Cas is a little different; last Dean checked, he was mostly intrigued by, like, bees and butterflies and stuff.

“Claire can look after it,” says Cas.

“Or Charlie,” Sam suggests with a shrug.

Dean sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s getting too crowded in here,” he mutters. Charlie isn’t even in the bunker this week; she’s co-running a game over in Iowa.

“I think Claire would enjoy a guinea pig,” says Cas, a little too casually.

Dean narrows his eyes. “Did she put you up to this?”

Cas shifts in his chair and then closes the tome in front of him. They _were_ considering a case, but now apparently they’re talking about this. “Christmas is next month,” says Cas, avoiding his eyes, and it’s such a change from Cas’s usual unwavering stares that Dean knows this is serious, comes from a place of guilt rather than a sudden interest in guinea pigs. “I thought about getting her a real cat,” he adds, “but you’re allergic.”

Dean huffs out a breath. Claire sleeps with that dumb Grumpy Cat stuffed animal every night, though she would vehemently deny it. She still snaps at Cas as often as she can, like she’s trying to prove how much she hates him. She wouldn’t have come to live in the bunker with them if she really did, though, right?

“We can barely take care of a kid,” he says. “How are we supposed to take care of an animal?”

“There are five of us regularly in the bunker, Dean,” says Sam. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“What do you want with an animal anyway?” Dean snaps. “Just pet that thing on your head.”

Sam gives him Bitch Face No. 41.

“If you’re opposed to purchasing a guinea pig, perhaps I could capture one of the rats in the basement and domesticate it,” muses Cas.

“No!” Sam and Dean say, and before Dean can go on about how gross and utterly _unsanitary_ that is, his phone rings in his pocket, and it sounds like Sam changed his ringtone again, because it’s playing some Japanese pop song. He throws a sneer at Sam, who snickers, and then slides his thumb across the screen, grateful for the interruption even though he doesn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?” he says.

“Hello,” says a cool female voice. “Is this Mr. Dean Winchester?”

Dean glances up at Sam, who raises his eyebrows. “Who’s asking?”

“This is Sydney Goodburn. Principal of North Kansas High School. I’m calling about Claire Novak.”

Dean frowns, and Sam and Cas give him curious looks, Cas with his head tilted to the side.

“What about Claire?” Dean asks, and Cas straightens up and leans forward.

Goodburn takes a deep breath. “I’m afraid that Claire... got into an altercation with another student during lunch today.”

“An altercation? You mean like a fight?” says Dean, and Sam and Cas both sit back. Cas watches Dean with wide eyes, and Sam looks a little impressed, which,  _no, Sam_ , his kid getting into fights at school is  _not_  something to be impressed about.

_His kid_. Christ.

“Yes. Are you available to meet with me this afternoon?”

“Where is she?” he asks.

“In the front office. I’m afraid we will need to discuss this in an official manner. Can you come to the school?”

“Yeah,” he says. “We’ll be there in an hour.” He barely hears the principal’s thank you before he hangs up. He runs a hand over his face and then meets Cas’s gaze.

“Claire got in a fight,” he says, as though that wasn’t obvious from the conversation they had overheard.

“About  _what_?” Sam asks, still looking impressed.

“The principal didn’t say,” he says, and pushes himself to his feet. “Come on, Cas. We gotta go get her.”

“Is she in trouble?” asks Cas, standing as well.

“She got in a fight at school, Cas, of course she’s in trouble,” Dean snaps, and immediately regrets it when Cas frowns. He turns away to stomp to his room for his jacket, and when he comes back out, Cas is waiting for him at the foot of the staircase in his trench coat. He leads the way up to the door and holds the door open for Dean, and they emerge from the bunker into the bright midday sun.

The drive out of Lebanon is silent, and when they hit the highway, Dean can’t take it anymore and he turns on the radio. Dean really isn’t sure how to handle this—a friggin’ parent-teacher conference. He’s never been on this side of it before, the parent side. He only remembers a lot of yelling from when his dad was called into their schools. Usually he was angrier that his hunt had been interrupted than about whatever Dean or Sam had done. A lot of the time, he just never showed up. So how was a dad supposed to act with a principal?

And it’s only made even more complicated by the fact that neither of them are actually Claire’s parents. They forged enough paperwork for it to appear that they had recently adopted her out of foster care, but that didn’t mean their dynamic matched their story. He had sort of hoped that Claire would lay low, so as not to draw attention to their weird-ass family. They had chosen a large high school for that exact reason, even though it was a farther drive away from the bunker. It didn’t help that she was still on probation at this school; they had only taken her, despite her age, because Sam had used his lawyer skills to insist that Claire be allowed to complete her senior year of high school.

They reach the city limits before either of them speak, and it’s Cas who breaks the silence.

“What is going to happen?” he asks, and a hot rock of guilt drops in Dean’s stomach. Of course Cas has no idea what happens when a kid gets in a fight at school.

“We’ll talk to the principal, find out what happened,” Dean says. He runs a hand over his mouth. “She’ll, uh, probably be suspended. It depends.” Cas nods, and Dean sighs. “Look, man, I’ve done this before—from the other side, but still—so I’ll handle it. You just...” He trails off, waving a hand vaguely.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have come,” says Cas quietly.

“What?” Dean glances at him. “No, man, you—I mean, she’s your—” He huffs in frustration. “You have the same DNA, at least. No, we’re doing this together.”

“Okay.”

Dean sighs again. Their family tree is all kinds of fucked up. Claire has only been living with them for four months, and Dean still isn’t sure why she came to stay with them in the first place. She had tried to kill Dean, for starters, and she was still prickly toward Cas, but she hadn’t wanted to stay at Jody’s either. When she showed up in Lebanon with a bag and a scowl, she had insisted that it was because she didn’t want to have to share a room with Alex. And she gets along well enough with Charlie and Sam, even though Dean and Cas were the ones to, like, adopt her or whatever. It had been a lot of paperwork for one bratty kid that, okay, he sort of liked, despite himself. Despite everything.

And even though it’s probably weird, he keeps thinking of her as his kid. As family. If they had anything in common, it’s that their families had been torn apart by supernatural forces. And that was something, right?

And he’ll never admit it out loud, but he also keeps thinking like Claire is actually his and Cas’s kid, which is just—No. He and Cas had only been, like, _together_ for a handful of months, starting shortly after they removed the Mark, shoving it into some box that Death claimed would hold it temporarily until they figured out a way to get it safely into a cage like Lucifer (but definitely not _with_ Lucifer). That was an ongoing negotiation with Rowena and Crowley that they all agreed to take a break from, because things were breaking down and Cas had been _this close_ to smiting Crowley, with or without angel mojo, and frankly, Dean couldn’t blame him. Crowley was still pulling the jilted lover act, made only worse after he found out that Dean and Cas actually had started up something.

They really didn’t plan on dragging Claire into that, but then she’d shown up at their door one night with a bag over her shoulder and a determined set to her jaw and an unspoken claim that they _owed_ her, and that was that. They faux-legally adopted her, and now she has two dads who have barely even figured out their own relationship, much less how to handle a kid, _much less how to handle a kid who apparently gets into fights at school, Jesus Christ._

Thinking about their lack of real authority over Claire doesn’t help at all. When he pulls into the high school parking lot, Dean’s still jittery. He parks the Impala and cuts the engine, but it takes him a few seconds to move.

“Dean,” says Cas, and Dean pushes open his door and steps out without answering, and Cas follows suit. Dean leads the way around the parking lot to the front of the school and tries very hard not to adjust his collar self-consciously when he sees the cop car sitting on the road in front of the office. All of the sudden he feels very nauseous, and memories of sitting in school offices and cop cars and police stations come rushing back vividly. The cool metal of handcuffs on his wrists, the growl of his father’s voice on the phone, the burning shame in his stomach.

He doesn’t realize he’s stopped at the bottom of the steps up to the school until Cas takes his hand. He starts and whips his head around to meet Cas’s eyes.

“It’ll be okay, Dean,” he says, but he can’t know that for sure. All the work they did to give her a life—give her another chance at high school, at actually _making it_ —might be for nothing. Claire is legally an adult; they can’t take her away from them. But they could kick her out of school, and then they’d be right back where they started only _worse_ , because they will have failed her _again_. And this time they’d basically be unfit parents. Dean remembers the couple of times Sammy was almost taken away from him, before they got the fuck out of town. What a failure he’d felt like, even without his dad shouting it at him—

“Dean,” Cas says again, and Dean shakes himself and squeezes his hand, but when he looks up, he sees a wide-eyed face in one of the school windows watching them. He quickly releases Cas’s hand and stomps up the steps to the school, the back of his neck hot under his jacket collar.

The only time he’d been to the front office before was when he and Cas were enrolling Claire in school, and he was honestly hoping they’d never have to come back. Schools make him uncomfortable, for a myriad of reasons. They check in at the little window where the secretary sits, and she directs them around the corner to the door. Dean swings it open roughly and sizes up the room out of habit, his heart rising into his throat when he sees the cop leaning against a desk with his arms crossed. His heart practically leaps out of his mouth when he sees Claire sitting in the chair across from the cop.

Her left eye is purple and puffy, and she’s holding an ice pack to her cheek under the bright blue glare of her other eye. Dean almost feels like he’s got Cas’s Angel Glare of Doom on him, and he’s struck, not for the first time, by how much like her father Claire looks.

Cas inhales sharply behind Dean and goes around him to kneel next to Claire. “Claire,” he says. “Are you all right?”

He reaches out to take the ice pack and examine her face, but she flinches away from him stubbornly, her jaw clenched and her eyes still glaring daggers at the both of them, and Cas drops his hand.

“I’m fine,” she grits out.

“That shiner says otherwise,” says Dean, crossing his arms over his chest. “You gonna tell me I should see the other chick?”

Claire looks away, her lips pressed resolutely together, and the cop scoffs.

“What?” Dean snaps at him, but before the cop can do anything but frown, the principal’s office door is opening and three people file out. The man, stocky and displeased, leads the blonde woman who is presumably his wife out of the office, and then their son follows them out, and  _oh_.

The kid’s nose is swollen and bandaged and _definitely_ broken, and he’s sporting two black eyes. There’s also a purple mass on his throat, and Dean feels a swell of pride at the smart placement of the blow before he stamps it down with the reminder that this is  _not_  a good thing and he should  _not_  feel impressed.

Principal Goodburn steps out of her office after the family and nods once at Dean and Cas. “Good, you’re here. Come on in, Mr. Winchester and Mr. Singer. I’ll be with you again in a few minutes,” she adds to the other family, and she holds open the door to her office and beckons Dean, Cas, and Claire inside.

Cas rises to his feet and offers his hand to Claire, but she rolls her eyes and pushes herself to her feet to stomp past him into the principal’s office. Cas just looks at Dean, and Dean shrugs and follows her, scratching the back of his head and avoiding the eyes of the boy’s family.

When they’re all in the principal’s office, she closes the door and walks back around to sit behind her desk, a heavy wooden thing that reminds Dean of forbidding school counselors and detention slips.

“Please have a seat,” she says, gesturing to the three chairs arranged in a line in front of her desk. Claire quickly takes the one furthest to the left and leans her elbow on the armrest to sit as far away from the other chairs as possible. Cas walks around the chairs to take the center one, but when Claire stiffens, he stops and sinks back into the right chair. Dean suppresses a sigh and pulls the center chair back to awkwardly slide in front of it and pull it back into line once he’s sitting. The principal is admirably patient with their musical chairs act.

“I called you here today,” Principal Goodburn begins formally, “because Claire got into a physical fight with another student during lunch. As you saw the results of the fight, I’m sure you understand how serious this is.” She looks at Cas and Dean in turn, and Dean belatedly nods when he realizes she’s looking for a reaction, and then he freezes mid-nod, because what if the cop is there for a reason? Maybe he should have brought Sam with them, in case they need some lawyer skills or something.

As though she read his mind, the principal continues, “Randy’s family has decided not to press charges, but we do  _not_  tolerate violence on campus—or off campus, for that matter. Conflict resolution should be done with words, not violence, and I hope that we can work together to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“Can you tell us what exactly happened here?” asks Cas. “What caused this fight?”

Principal Goodburn’s eyes slide to Claire, who keeps her gaze resolutely on the corner of the desk. “You’ll have to ask Claire,” she says. “I’m afraid that she refuses to tell her side of the story. It appears that she hit Randy first, and Randy claims to have acted in self-defense after that. Our security team had to pull them apart in the courtyard.”

Holy crap, that’s quite the fight. Dean turns to look at Claire. She’s still holding the ice pack to her face, but she’ll probably recover faster than the boy. She really fucked him up.

“Wanna share with the class, Claire?” he asks her.

“No,” she mutters.

“No?” he says, and when she doesn’t answer, he turns in his seat to face her. “ _No_? What happened, Claire?”

“Nothing,” she bites out.

“It sure as hell better not be nothing,” Dean growls. “You can’t hit people for no reason.”

Claire scoffs and finally she turns to glare at him fully. “Says Dean Winchester, PhD in hitting people for no reason,” she spits, and  _fuck,_  that  _hurts_ , because he thought they had gotten past that, thought that with the Mark gone and him  _not_  losing his shit in blood-lust-y outbursts had shown her that that wasn’t him, not really. Not really.

Or maybe it is, and that’s why this hurts so much.

“Claire!” Cas snaps, and the anger in his voice startles Dean, too. He winces and Claire looks away, and Cas puts his hand over where Dean’s moved to cover his arm where the Mark used to be. Dean quickly moves his hand back to the left arm rest, knocking Cas’s hand out of the way.

Before he can say anything, Principal Goodburn speaks, her voice suddenly cold. “What does that mean?”

“That our work gets violent sometimes,” says Cas, his gaze still burning the side of Dean’s face.

Goddamnit. This is also why they don’t let her hunt. The _last_ thing they need is CPS on their cases because the school thinks they’re beating her and she’s lashing out at other students.

“Why’d you do it, Claire?” he demands.

“Dean—” Cas begins.

Dean ignores him. “Did he hurt you?”

She glares at the corner of the desk again. “No.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“No.”

“Then what did he do?”

“Nothing.”

“He must have done something!”

“ _Nothing_ , okay?”

“Dean—”

“Claire, goddamn it,” Dean says, and he hates the way his voice rises, hates how he sounds like his dad, hates the way he can’t stop himself, the same way he couldn’t stop himself from killing all those people when he had the Mark, how he almost can’t stop himself when they go out on hunts even now, but at least those are monsters, they’re _monsters_ , _they’re monsters_. “Tell us why you hit him! And don’t you fucking tell me it was over nothing!”

“Mr. Winchester!”

“Dean—”

“Because he called you faggots!” Claire shouts, whipping around to glare at him, eyes bright and fierce, and Dean freezes. He feels heat creep up his neck and over his face, and he can’t move, can’t breathe. Claire releases a heavy, shuddering breath, and her words spill out, sharp and torrential. “He came up to me at lunch and said,  _Hey aren’t you the chick with the two faggots for parents?_  So I punched him.”

Dean stares at her, and she glares at him defiantly, gripping the arm rests of her chair and leaning forward as though in challenge. Fuck. This is exactly why he denied everything for so long, pushed it down, down, down, hid it from himself and everyone else, because he knew anyone knowing would have repercussions and they would  _suck_ , and now he’s just passed on those repercussions to Claire. Fuck. Fuck.

“And he hit you back?” says Cas quietly, leaning around Dean to look at Claire.

Her eyes flick to him and hold. “Yes,” she says, and she draws herself up, lifting her chin. “So I hit him again.”

Cas nods once and sits back, and the silence wells up so that Dean feels like he’s drowning in it. He feels sixteen again, sitting in the principal’s office after slamming some kid against a locker for suggesting that Dean was some kind of queer. He sprained the kid’s wrist, and the school had to call his dad, and when they asked why he did it, he made something up about the kid looking at him funny, because even repeating what the kid had said seemed like an admission.

“I’m so sorry, gentlemen,” the principal says quietly, and Dean glances up long enough to see her embarrassed, pitying look, and he looks down again. “I didn’t know. We don’t tolerate bigotry or bullying either. I’m so sorry.”

“What happens now?” asks Cas, because Dean can’t form words over the lump in his throat. So much for him taking the lead on this one.

“Regardless of the reason, Claire started the fight,” the principal says reluctantly. “So I’m afraid I have to suspend her.”

Claire bristles next to Dean, but he still can’t move, can’t look at any of them, knows his face is on fire and can’t help it. He remembers his dad yelling at him in the car on the way home, and all he could feel was shame for being what he was, for looking at boys and much as girls, for having to get defensive over it, even though nobody knew. Nobody could know. Nobody could  _ever_ know. For this exact goddamn reason.

“For how long?” asks Cas.

The principal hesitates. “Five days. Starting tomorrow. You can appeal the suspension, but it might be more trouble than it’s worth, considering the violent nature of the infraction.”

“And the boy?” asks Cas calmly.

“What do you mean?” asks the principal, slowly and a little puzzled.

“You said that you don’t tolerate bigotry or bullying either,” says Cas. “And he hit Claire back. Will he be suspended as well?”

There is a long pause, and when Dean looks up, the principal looks pained and apologetic.

“You have to understand,” she begins quietly. “Mr. Tremmel is on the school board.”

“That is not what I asked,” says Cas, and Dean’s heart skips a beat because, shit, that is his pissed off angel voice. Even Claire tenses in her chair, knowing what that means.

Principal Goodburn must notice, too. “Three days,” she says in practically a whisper. “For reciprocating violence.”

“That does not seem like enough for hitting my daughter,” says Cas, and _oh_. Wow.

“Cas,” Claire hisses, sounding annoyed and embarrassed and scandalized all at once. She leans forward to glare at him around Dean, but he ignores her.

Principal Goodburn nods reluctantly. “Considering the additional harassment that has come to my attention, I will add detention to his punishment for the remaining two days of next week. Is this amenable?”

Cas turns to Dean, but fuck if he knows what’s fair.  _None_  of this seems fair. Not the fact that Claire has to deal with bullying on their behalf, not the fact that there’s no  _wonder_  she hates them both so much, not that they live in a world where people are like this, nothing.

But Cas is waiting for him to say something, so he mutters, “Sure,” without looking up at any of them, and Cas turns back to nod at the principal. She sighs, relieved, and marks a few notes on the papers in front of her. She’s still talking, explaining what they’ll need to do, the papers they’ll need to sign, and Dean’s heard it all before, has had to forge his father’s signature all over these documents, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, because he can’t hear her over the humiliation pounding in his ears. But then Principal Goodburn is standing, and Cas does, too, so Dean gets to his feet and follows them all out of the office to fill out the paperwork in the waiting room. Goodburn calls the Tremmels back into her office, leaving Dean, Cas, and Claire with the secretary and the police officer.

“Dean,” says Cas, once the principal’s door is closed behind the Tremmels, and Dean takes the paperwork he’s holding and goes to the secretary’s counter.

“You got a pen?” he croaks, and he clears his throat to try again but before he can, she pulls a pen out of a cup and slides it across the counter to him. He takes it and starts to fill out their names and information, but he can hear the low, angry voice of Randy’s father through the door, even if he can’t make out the words, and he realizes that everyone in the office must have heard Claire’s outburst and his hands shake badly, and then Cas takes the pen from him.

“Let me,” says Cas gently, and Dean finally meets his eyes. Cas looks sad and resigned and like he’s gonna want to talk about it later. All Dean wants to do later is go down to the range in the bunker’s basement and shoot until his arms are numb.

“Sit,” Cas orders, sliding the papers from under Dean’s hand before he can argue. Dean nods and goes to sit next to Claire. She’s looking at the ground, still pressing the ice pack to her cheek, and her angry expression seems to have softened into embarrassment, her lips pressed in a thin line. Dean reaches out to take the ice pack, and this time she lets him. Her cheek is red and swollen, and when he gently prods it with his fingers, she winces, but nothing feels broken. He presses the ice pack back onto her face.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he says, and it feels inadequate.

“It’s okay,” she says, and then adds, “Now you’ve seen the other guy, so.”

He chuckles in spite of himself and it almost becomes some sort of choked sob, so he clears his throat. “You know your, uh, makeup is a little uneven there,” he tries to joke, rubbing a thumb over her eyebrow to avoid the bruised part of her eye.

“That’s the style these days, Dean,” she says. “It’s called School Fight Chic.”

He snorts out a laugh and Claire smiles wryly, and Cas says, “That’s not funny, you two,” from the counter, which only makes them both giggle harder. The cop frowns disapprovingly at them, and the secretary bites her lip to hide a smile. Cas looks over at Dean, raising an eyebrow, but his displeasure is negated by the twitch at the corner of his lips. He walks over with the pen and papers and holds them out to Dean.

“It’s finished,” says Cas. “It just needs your signature.”

Dean takes the documents and flips through them to sign and initial all over them wherever Cas’s wide chicken scratch doesn’t mark its territory over a line. He hands everything back to Cas, and he takes it to the secretary, who smiles, puts her pen back in the cup, and slides the documents into a folder. Then Cas comes back over to kneel next to Claire again.

“Let me see,” he says, and Claire reluctantly lowers the ice pack. Cas grimaces and his hand twitches, and Dean wonders if he’s thinking about his angel mojo and how quickly he could fix this if he still had it.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” says Claire.

Cas shakes his head. “You are gradually becoming a Winchester.”

“Ew,” says Claire, wrinkling her nose, and then she winces as the motion pulls at her bruised cheek. “Ow.”

“Wow, that was even a trademarked Sam Winchester Bitch Face,” says Dean.

“Shut up,” says Claire.

“Make me, Blondie,” he says, slinging an arm over her shoulder. She half-heartedly pushes him off, but when the principal’s door opens again, he removes his arm anyway and pushes to his feet. The Tremmels file out of the office again, looking considerably angrier than the first time. The boy’s father meets Dean’s eyes and glares, his gaze flicking to Cas and back to Dean, as though it is their fault that their son is a two-bit bigot. Who hits girls. Dean feels rage bubble up in his stomach and clenches his fists and thinks he might be liable to punch someone, too.

Principal Goodburn follows the Tremmels out of her office and goes to the counter.

“Mandy, can you make a copy of this for me?” she says, handing the secretary a sheaf of papers. The secretary goes out, and Goodburn turns back to the room.

“We’re settled here, unless you would like to have a group conference,” she says, eyeing the Tremmels.

Mr. Tremmel grunts. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he says.

Goodburn nods. “All right then. Claire and Randy will begin their suspension periods tomorrow. Randy will serve detention on Wednesday and Thursday of next week. And I expect to  _never_  see either of you in my office again,” she adds, leveling a stern glare onto Claire and Randy in turn.

“Yes, ma’am,” mutters Randy, and Claire glances away at the floor in what might be a nod but is mostly jaw-clenching. Dean doesn’t really blame her. Getting yelled at by a principal sucks.

Goodburn nods once. “You are dismissed for today then. Thank you for coming,” she adds to Dean, Cas, and the Tremmels. “I apologize for the disruption to your work days.”

Dean shrugs and almost says, “Boys will be boys,” but Claire’s not a boy and he’s not his dad and he knows better. The Tremmels say nothing and start toward the office door, but Cas holds up a hand.

“A moment, please,” he says, and he turns to Claire. “Claire, I believe you owe this boy an apology.”

“What?” Claire sputters, at the same time Dean blurts out in surprise, “Seriously?” Claire glances at Dean, looking betrayed, but he had  _nothing_  to do with this. If he had it his way, he would get a shot at the kid, too, though maybe it would be more appropriate to hit his father, if the way Mr. Tremmel is glaring at him and Cas is any indication. Apple doesn’t rot far from the tree, and all.

“I’m _not_ —” Claire begins, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth defiantly.

“You hit him, Claire,” says Cas, and he looks over at Randy, gives him a once-over, and adds, “Multiple times, it seems. And during lunch, no less, so you hit him in front of his friends. That must have been terribly humiliating for him.” He turns back to face the Tremmels as he says this, his face carefully composed. It hits Claire the same time as it does Dean, her eyes widening a little.

Yeah, now Dean is all for it. “Yeah, Claire,” he says, turning to face the Tremmels. He crosses his arms and schools his own features as best he can, but he knows he’s probably failing to hide his triumph, the call for a challenge. “Apologize to him.”

Claire huffs and glares at the two of them, but then she turns, too, and adopts the same stance and says, curtly, “I’m sorry for hitting you.”

Randy’s eyes are blazing, and Mr. Tremmel clenches his fists. Principal Goodburn looks to the sky, as though asking for patience, and then she sighs.

“And you, Randy?” Goodburn says. “Do you have anything to say?”

Randy’s face reddens until he lets out his breath through his nose, his jaw clenched. “I’m sorry, too,” he grits out. “For hitting you.”

“And?” prompts Goodburn, going all in, apparently, because why the hell not.

He glances away. “And for saying what I said. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” says Claire coolly.

“Are we finished here?” asks Mr. Tremmel, clearly holding in barely-contained rage. The cop behind him seems mildly amused, at least.

“I believe so,” says Cas, and then he very deliberately turns his back to the Tremmels to face Claire, because Cas is a badass and has zero fear. “Claire, get your assignments from your teachers. Where is your locker?”

“I’ll just—” Claire starts.

“You heard him,” says Dean, and he holds out a hand. “Locker number and combo. Cough ‘em up, kid.”

Claire sneers at him. “I don’t want you going through my stuff.”

Dean snorts. “What, you think I’ll find your tampons or something? I’ll only touch your textbooks,” he promises with a roll of his eyes when she only continues to glower.

She huffs out a breath but reaches into her backpack for a pen and turns back to Dean to write on his palm.

“Oh, come on,” he complains when he sees that the pen is a Sharpie.

“Suck it up, Freckles,” she says, pressing the numbers into his palm with the black Sharpie. Dean takes a swipe at her with his other hand, but she ducks it and keeps writing. Cas is saying, “Thank you,” to the cop behind them, while the Tremmels slink out of the office, forgotten and thoroughly dismissed.

Claire goes to get her assignments from her teachers while Dean and Cas find her locker. Cas tries to follow Claire, but she snaps at him to back off, so Dean steers him away by the shoulders down the hall to locker A205. The bell rings when they are halfway there, so they have to shove against the tide of students to reach Claire’s locker. Dean twists the combination lock open to find that her locker is actually really bare. There are four textbooks and three spiral notebooks crammed inside with loose papers, and there are no decorations. Dean remembers having lockers like this, lockers that never looked like the ones on TV, with all the stickers and photos and decorations inside. The girl at her locker next to them has a mirror magnetically attached to her locker door. She glances at them suspiciously, slams her locker shut, and hurries away.

“Are you all right?” asks Cas, and Dean realizes that he’s been staring into Claire’s locker without moving to grab any of her books.

“What? Yeah,” he says, and he slides two textbooks out and hands them to Cas.

Cas readjusts the books to rest against his hip. “I know you don’t like that word,” he says slowly.

Dean gives him a Look. “No one likes that word, Cas.”

Cas frowns. “Yes, but—”

Dean shoves the last two books into Cas’s arms and closes Claire’s locker. “Go find Claire,” he says. “I’ll meet you at the car.”

“Dean,” Cas begins, but Dean is already pushing his way through the slowly thinning crowd of students, because he’s not having this conversation _at all_ , much less _here_.

When he gets out the front doors, the kid—Randy—is standing on the front steps, one strap of his backpack over his shoulder. He’s looking out over the small parking lot at the front of the school, his shoulders hunched. Dean looks around. The cop car is gone, and the kid’s parents are nowhere in sight, and Dean is glad he sent Cas to go find Claire, because he would absolutely disapprove of what he’s about to do.

He walks over, starting down the stairs, and stops on the step Randy is on. Randy glances at him and shifts his weight, staring straight ahead very self-consciously.

“Hey,” Dean says, without looking at him.

The kid glances at him out of the corner of his eye and looks forward again. “Hey,” he grunts.

Dean looks around and then, very slowly, turns and walks over to Randy. He stops just within arm’s reach and leans in. “Listen,” he says, and Randy’s eyes flick to him nervously again. “I don’t care what you say about me,” Dean continues, very slowly, “but if you _ever_ touch my kid again—” And now Randy looks at him, has to, drawn in by the threat in Dean’s tone, the primal fear forcing him to react, and _fuck_ , it’s a good thing the Mark is gone, Dean’s gotta tone it down, but still he says: “We’re gonna have words. D’you understand me?”

Randy’s eyes flick away and back again. He nods.

Dean keeps his eyes on him, and Randy shifts again. “Good,” he says, and he eyes Randy’s nose and can’t resist. “You’ve got something on your nose,” he adds, thumbing his own, and then he finally walks away.

Claire looks pissed when she and Cas finally reach the Impala, but Dean feels no remorse for siccing Cas on her to avoid having a chick flick moment. He’s still working on self-acceptance; he doesn’t need to think about other people’s homophobia. Or biphobia. Whatever. There are too many words for this thing.

Dean starts the car as they both climb in. Claire throws her backpack into the seat behind Dean and sits down violently, and Dean doesn’t say anything. Let her throw a fit; she did get suspended, after all. Cas takes out his phone and unlocks the screen.

“What are you doing?” Dean asks.

“I’m letting Sam know we’re coming back,” he says.

“Oh.” Dean turns around to back out of the parking space and catches Claire’s eye. She glares at him, her arms crossed over her chest. “Seatbelt on, Claire,” he tells her. She rolls her eyes and yanks the seatbelt into place and glares at him again, as though to ask,  _Happy?_ and he’s not sure that he is.

Cas types out a text to Sam in that slow way of his and they pull out of the school parking lot and onto the road, only the grumble of the Impala’s engine filling the silence. It’s a long time until any of them speak, and it’s Cas who breaks the silence again.

“Claire,” he says.

“Save it, Cas,” says Claire. “I already got an earful from the principal. I think I got it, thanks.”

“No,” says Cas, and he turns around to face her. “Thank you.”

When Dean glances at him, he’s smiling softly, and a glance in the rearview mirror tells Dean that Claire is surprised. She drops her gaze from Cas’s and bites her lip.

“Yeah,” she says. “You know. Whatever.”

Cas just smiles at her for a while longer, until Claire shifts awkwardly in her seat, and then he turns back around once his weird staring seems to be finished. And then it’s silent again.

 

* * *

 

They’ve almost reached the highway entrance when Dean sees it and inspiration strikes. He changes lanes quickly and takes a right turn, and Cas gives him a curious look that makes way for realization when he sees that they’re pulling into a PetCo parking lot.

“What are we doing here?” Claire asks when Dean turns off the car.

Dean turns around to give her his best no-nonsense glare. “First of all, no dogs. The bunker’s big enough that I can avoid a cat, but no dogs. Period. And I don’t want whatever you get in my room. You got it?”

She stares at him with wide eyes.

“Great. Merry early Christmas, Claire,” he says, opening his door and climbing out of the car.

 

* * *

 

Claire picks out a guinea pig, because of course she does. Weirdness must run in the family.

**Author's Note:**

> All places and people are fictional and completely made up, and any resemblance to real people or places is a coincidence. For example, North Kansas High, as far as I'm aware, does not actually exist. Or at least it doesn't exist on Google Maps. *shrug*


End file.
